There was a packed meeting of the Labour Movement for Europe at the party conference. Many of those present would have felt a new keenness, having heard the Liberal Democrats declare only a few days earlier that they are coming out as a pro-EU party once again.
We have speculated before over the danger in this position of Labour, still trying to shore up its appeal among xenophobes, in possibly becoming even more hardline pro-Brexit.
But consider a new scenario. With the Liberal Democrats having at last found their courage, Labour members are going to get restless, many MPs too; and suppose the LibDem move looks as though it’s getting traction? After all, Labour isn’t a Brexit Party on principle – only on the lack of it. In other circumstances it would be called cowardice in the face of the enemy.
So what if the enemy have all run away and the LD are looting all the political plunder? What keeps Labour pro-Brexit when all the political goodies are going to their rivals? Labour at the present rate are going to need some public goodwill, and their MPs will begin to show their exasperation. The change in LD position not long ago seemed most likely to mean Labour’s Brexit stance would harden. But perhaps not any more.
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Mind you, in a World at One interview, Yvette Cooper once again declared of the mooted EU youth mobility scheme that “We don’t think this is the right approach… The UK voted to leave free movement, and we are not going back”.
Ms Cooper’s sour face made clear that this was not a subject on which she had any intention of elaborating. Labour’s tight-knit little cadre decided all that time ago that the whole subject of Brexit, but most particularly free movement, should be avoided at all costs.
Now, Ms Cooper is reckoned to have a brain the size of a planet, but even she couldn’t come up with a reason why Brexit was a good idea, except that people had once voted against it. But of course, in the same way one could say that in 2019 the electorate voted against a Labour government, and so we shouldn’t go back to a Labour government. More to the point though, what people voted (narrowly) for in 2016 was to leave the EU. That included dozens, probably hundreds of policies, yet Ms Cooper chose free movement in particular. Because the subject of free movement is what the government most fears.
So once again, the Labour leadership bottles it. Their policy is not actually of their choice, but chosen for them by the bigots and the racists and the xenophobes. So those of us not members of the party can only beseech those who are, ordinary members and MPs, to do the business on our behalf.
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This has been a difficult diary to write. The triumphant arrival of a Labour government after 14 years of misery was expected to bring with it the kind of peccadillos that might provide regular scribblings. But it wasn’t expected that, week after week, the new government would employ a whole greengrocers’s stall of banana skins to provide something to write about.
When Starmer & Co stop saying silly things, Pecksniff will stop reporting them. The party has shown itself unexpectedly naïve and, more predictably, pig-headed. Yet reporting these idiocies uncomfortably aligns this diary with those media who can’t or won’t see the difference between this government and what went before. There is a difference between borrowing a flat for your son’s use in swotting up for his GCSEs, and corruption involving public money and conspiring with the nation’s enemies, which was flagrantly a coherent part of Tory polices and which the media all but ignored.
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One thing missing from the government, one disappointment after all the years of lies and cynicism and self-interest, is gentleness. There really is no cause for aggression and chest thumping and trying to play the hard man. Stop shouting. It only makes Labour sound much like their predecessors. An occasional demonstration of empathy would not come amiss (even if showing it to refugees might be going too far, obvs…).
Angela Rayner promised during the week that, though times are tough at the moment, in five years’ time we will see the difference. But dear reader, can you recall a single occasion during your lifetime in which an incoming government – of any stripe – has said anything different? And in that case, surely somebody who has trod the corridors of power during all that time would have come up with the idea that democratic politics as we know it simply isn’t working.
To us, out here in the cold, in whose name democracy is supposed to work, it is increasingly becoming apparent. But perhaps if you are part of the political class, acknowledgement of your failure is something you would rather not contemplate.
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There is no point in the government or its MPs claiming that really it’s all gone well and they had no other choice in their policy pronouncements. The economic argument itself is debatable, but the politics of it can’t be defended. That is because in this, the public are the experts – and the prime minister’s approval rating has fallen by a staggering 46% in a few weeks. There is no point Labour claiming its strategy worked well, because the message was to the public and the public saw through it. By definition then, it failed.
From the “tough” bravura of that King’s Speech to that glass-half-full promise of renaissance – to allay criticism from all sides – is clearly an unwanted detour. But why was it necessary? Once again it looks as though the prime minister’s tight-knit little group of decision-makers is too tight. There is no space to take account of other views, or to compute how those decisions will be received even by its own willing supporters.
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This diary has no intention of cataloguing all the movements of Nigel Farage, nor does Pecksniff intend continually to wag a finger at the voters of Clacton. (Note to editor: ‘wagging a finger’ in this context is different from ‘giving the finger’.) Suffice to say that Mr Farage is once again absent from his constituency. This time he is in Malaysia, explaining to rich men how to avoid paying the taxes which would otherwise solve most of the problems his constituents would bring to him if ever he held a surgery.
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One of those questions that nobody ever asks is: “Whatever became of that charismatic pussycat Steve Barclay (NE Cambridgeshire), who was such a supporter of the NHS?” If it is difficult to imagine Mr Barclay before he became a politician, it is just as difficult to understand how he is one still. Or why, when we see yet another picture of our man wearing that look of bovine incredulity when confronted by one of the electorate.
But since he chose not to fall on his sword with so many colleagues before the election, nor put forward his name in his party’s leadership race, we might wonder what he’s up to.
Whatever it is, an anonymous group of ‘business people’ in his constituency, calling themselves Fens Business Club, have been prepared to give him £20,000 to make sure he goes on doing it. We are indebted to John Elworthy and the Cambs News for the investigation. Mr Barclay has quite properly declared the donation, but the timing is interesting. The first £10,000 actually arrived during the election campaign, at a time when the party was on its uppers and candidates were reporting their supporters’ cupboards were bare. Nice one, Steve. But why is this group being so coy, and Mr Barclay refusing to disclose their identities?
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A couple of blessed weeks without any mention of Liz Truss, my dears, and like Pecksniff you may have hoped that perhaps she had run away with the raggle-taggle gypsies-o. But we are not yet to be granted salvation. It seems she was merely re-inventing herself. Her Twitter biog now mentions primarily that she is a “Sunday Times best selling writer”; then goes on to mention that she once upon a time happened to be prime minister.
To be fair, her book did reach no.10, for one week only, and apparently with as much justification as she herself reached No.10, since it immediately plummeted. It was last recorded in 70th place. For the record (and no doubt to her considerable pique), her first week’s book sales were 1,000 copies fewer than Matt Hancock’s.
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“Lib Dems lose control of Dacorum Borough Council after eight female councillors quit in dramatic scenes”, reports Hemel Today. A nice tight headline which tells the story well. It seems the eight women councillors resigned after accusing the group leader, Councillor Adrian England, of “failing to deal with allegations of bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment”.
The accusation was presented to the council by the spokesperson for the breakaways, Councillor Claire Hobson, and the move means that the council falls into no overall control, though the eight councillors remain members of the party, now sitting as independents. That would usually make the party very cross, though the grounds for the resignations might make them pull in their horns a bit.
The resignations came two weeks after a hearing of the council’s standards committee dismissed complaints from two councillors against former council leader Cllr Ron Tindall. There will be more on Dacorum Council.
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On Tuesday there was a by-election in Thurston, a ward of Mid Suffolk Council. The council made international news last year when it became, surprisingly, the first Green majority controlled local authority in the northern hemisphere. Until then the council had usually been in no overall control. So the Greens held it by a whopping 24 seats to 10, spread between Conservatives and LibDems.
But this week, the Tory candidate Harold Richardson just pipped the Greens. In doing so, he increased his party’s vote by 19% while the Green share dropped by 11%. At first glance, this looks like a drama, though as recently as May this year the Greens comfortably held their seat in another by-election.
So once again, Thurston will take its rightful place as the focus of British psephology over the coming weeks, as Pecksniff calls in his best intelligencers in Beyton, Norton, East Barton and of course in the public bar of the Fox and Hounds, to discover what is afoot.
More as we get it…
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There has been a council by-election in Eaton Socon in Cambridgeshire, won by an independent. Not so odd in that part of the world, but it is noticeable that the Liberal Democrats have taken up where they left off before the general election with their dubious bar charts – though at least this time they detail where the figures come from.
Most interesting however, for those who earnestly desire a politics which is neither cynical nor mean spirited, is the comment from the Labour candidate, who trailed in fifth.
“Though I’m obviously gutted not to have won, I know Barry will be a dedicated public servant,” says Labour candidate Harvey Woodhouse of the winner, independent Barry Chapman. “He and most other candidates ran a clean campaign – and did our town justice.”
A gracious response, and it is only proper that in turn we acknowledge Mr Woodhouse and hope to hear more of him.
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Pecksniff will be spending next week in the Baie de Somme, eating flamische and navarin d’agneau près salé, and taking refuge from the Conservative Party conference. Hence sadly there will be no diary. Normal service, however, will be resumed on 11 October.
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